When a production works — really works — it’s usually because someone wrote it that way. Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton is one of those plays. It has been terrifying audiences since 1938, survived two major film adaptations in the 1940s, and somehow managed to embed itself so deeply in the cultural conversation that it gave us a word we use every day.
Steven Dietz is one of America’s finest working playwrights and a generous friend to PURE Theatre. He also adapted this production — what he calls a renovation. Not a rewrite, not a reimagining. A renovation. He kept Hamilton’s bones and made it sing in the voices of actors working today, for audiences living right now. That distinction matters, and he explains exactly what it means in this conversation.
When we asked him to join us for a talkback on closing weekend he brought exactly what you’d expect from someone who understands both the architecture of a play and the audience sitting in front of it.
This conversation covers the full arc — Patrick Hamilton’s original, the Ingrid Bergman and Diana Wynyard film adaptations, how the production landed with our audiences, and what it means that “gaslighting” has become the word of our moment.
Forty-eight minutes. Worth every one.
Press play above!
